SOURCE: “Hare Apparent,” in New York, October 7, 1996, p. 50.

In the following review, Simon praises Skylight for being “open to multiple interpretations.”

After World War II, new British playwrights burst forth like gangbusters. It was like a bicycle race, first a whole pack, then a peloton, and finally two cyclists out front: Tom Stoppard and now David Hare. With the others declining, drying up, or dead, the race remains to these two.

Hare came from behind. Slag, Knuckle, and Teeth ‘n’ Smiles showed great promise but had something slightly limiting about them. Other plays—Plenty, A Map of the World, Fanshen—were politicized to the verge of propaganda. Still, in Plenty and again in The Secret Rapture Hare was fighting his way through to making his characters as interesting as his ideas, albeit with uncertain results. But with Racing Demon and now Skylight, he has written first-rate drama in...